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A clash between customer relationship management systems sparked an emergency at the District of Columbia’s health insurance exchange last week.

Members of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority Board voted 4-0 Friday to spend $197,000 to pay for more Salesforce.com licenses.

Managers of the district’s locally run DC Health Link exchange plan to use the money to get all employees in the exchange contact center, and in the authority offices, on the same system.

The exchange board is supposed to make the managers put contracts for more than $100,000 through a finance committee review. The board can waive the finance committee review requirement for urgent matters.

Mila Kofman, the exchange executive director, said at the board meeting that getting exchange contact center reps and managers on the same CRM system was urgent.

“We need licenses right away,” Kofman said, according to an audio recording of the meeting posted on the exchange authority website.

A clash between the Salesforce.com system in use at the contact center and another system at the exchange management offices has slowed efforts to address consumer concerns, Kofman said.